High Maintenance: stoner clichés wasted in marijuana web show

A nameless cannabis delivery guy delivers his much needed medication to stressed-out New Yorkers in this character-driven web series. High Maintenance was created by husband and wife team Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. They produce the series with their BFF Russell Gregory as Janky Clown Productions.

Created and written by husband and wife team Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, executive produced by them and Sinclair’s manager, Russell Gregory, and brought to life by a stellar cast and crew, High Maintenancefollows a cycling weed man as he makes his deliveries to different New Yorkers in their native habitats. Nuanced in its voyeurism and deft in its subtle comedic breaks, this is more than a funny show. It’s honest and true, unapologetically and consistently straight with no regard for Internet video conventions or goofy stoner genre norms.

It is a series that works less about the plot, but rather about the characters. One example are the stressed-out career woman, the young party-pair and two alleged homosexual women who stand beside the expensive Chilean wine in the cupboard a framed Occupy posters and hear Bon Iver from the Macbook. Whoever thought typical hipster stereotypes, has only partially right. For behind the first impressions hide clever dialogues and details, the High Maintenance make witty, without having to fall with the humor through the door.

We thought this idea would be a good vehicle because it allows viewers to go inside people’s apartments which every New Yorker is always curious about. Also, we have friends in LA who are kind of into the weed scene, and the weed web series that we saw over there…I don’t want to say they were adolescent, but I just said they were adolescent. We thought we could do it in a way that actually showed adult New Yorkers who are dealing with the city. We feel that people in New York smoke for many different reasons, whether it’s a city stress or they just like to smoke because it keeps them alive in different ways. We thought it was a different idea so we just went with it.